“the Arabweek”
5 November 1984

At the evening of the American elections and the two parties’ conflict:
Dr. Adel A. FRAYHA for the “Arabweek”

There is no intellectual theory for the Democratic or Republican Party and the American Society does not need parties

The Republican secures the interests of the banks and companies

The Democratic: a union of the farmers of the west, the workers of the north east and the planters of the middle west

The American elections are near and precisely on 06/11/1984. The predictions are many in spite of that the preference goes to President Ronald Reagan.

These elections are not simple elections. The voting will be done in a country considered to be leader of the world and pioneer in the individual initiative system. The result of the votes will affect in a way or the other the course of matters inside the United States and especially outside them.

Within this context, “The Arabweek” made an interview with Dr. Adel A. FRAYHA, ex-researcher in the European Center in Nancy, a member in the league of the French writers and a teacher of the Political sciences in the Lebanese University, lecturer in the subjects of “Political Parties” and “Political Diplomacy”, in which he handles the parties’ role in general and the American parties in specific as well as the background of the American elections at the interior and international levels.

The newspaper decided that the interview will be comprehensive and objective in the same time and enlarged the frame of its questions asking the first question to Dr. FRAYHA:

Q. Is it possible for a political regime to survive without parties?

Dr. Adel FRAYHA: In fact, the political parties and the political regime are twins. There are no political regimes without political parties or we enter in mid of the absolute regimes that were spread before the eighteenth century in most of the European royal regimes. There are also no political regimes with one political party or we enter in totalitarian regimes, as Nazis, fascist and communists, were the opposition cannot give its opinion or reach the political regime with its demands. Political regimes cannot be established but by the party plurality especially the two parties’ system as it ensures the alternation on the rule and takes all the citizen’s requests to distribute them within the regime.

Q. The questions are now asked in reverse: can political parties exist without a political regime?

R. It is not appropriate to say that political parties exist without political regime or we enter in a stage known in Lebanon during its last crisis, as in the absence of the state, each political party managed the affairs of the region in which he is present. The political parties need a central political regime and the political regime needs political parties, two at least.

Q. What is the role of political parties in the political regime?

R. The parties’ role and some of others political forces (trade-unions) is to submit the citizens’ needs or urgent requests to the political regime and press them to turn them to decisions in force that satisfy the citizens. The parties are a link between the citizens and the regime. Each political regime needs to persevere itself the help of the citizens living there. The help role remains up the reply to the urgent requests. As much  the urgent requests are fulfilled, as the help role is a protective shield for the political regime.

R. The aware political regime takes preventive measures to embrace the help role and that, for preserving its existence fulfills the urgent needs or at least some of them without any pressure from the parties (or trade-unions), which their major role remains to press the regime for fulfilling the needs and requests before reaching the reign, so when they reach it they transfer the requests from a party program to a governmental one.

Q. What is within this context the modern determination of the political party?

R. It is know for everybody that political parties took this current shape with the beginning of the twentieth century. The parliamentary political categories and the political orientations to some groups became, at the end of the 19e century, of an external and internal organization and spread all over the places in which they work, i.e. the regions that work on spreading their ideology. From this thought, the political party in the modern specification is a group of people of one political ideology, organized between them, seeking to spread into a state, in order to control the powers in it.

Q. Are the American parties Ideological?

R. The Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States of America do not have any political ideology. They are both rightists but they do not have any doctrine. The Republican Party founded in 1856 in Pittsburg, capital of the State of Pennsylvania in the north east of the country is based on ensuring the interests of the owners of the factories, banks and big financial institutions and companies. Upon its foundation, i.e. before five years of the civil war outbreak between the northern and the southern people, the Republican Party took a supporting position to liberate the slaves existing in large numbers in the American South. The Republican party undertook, until the entrance of the United States of America in the First World War in 1917, the “Monroe Doctrine” saying that “America is for Americans”, i.e. not to allow to any state to interfere in the American continent affairs, the northern, center or southern continent, and not to interfere in return in the international affairs especially the European ones. But the Republican Party moved away from this isolationist theory and started interfering in all the pending affairs in the world during and after the end of World War I.

Q. Does the American Democratic Party is like the Republican Party, without a doctrine?

R. The Democratic Party, that has no real foundation, showed its political orientation in the 1824 elections with the arrival of President Jackson to the rule in 1828. This Party is similar to a union of the farmers of the west and the workers of the north east and the planters of the midwest. Those do not have any political doctrine. Their political doctrine is to ensure their interests. This union can leave its democratic candidate and engage with the republican one if necessary. That what really happened in the United States in November 1980 as most of the states voted in large numbers to the Republican President Ronald Reagan and his Vice-President Georges Bush. The west, midwest and northeast as well as the south voted in its majority to the Republican candidate and gave up the Democratic one.

Q. So the American parties do not possess the doctrine element?

R. the tow parties’ doctrine is based on pragmatism. They do not possess a doctrine but an accomplishment of interests. The interest of the owners of factories, companies, banks and big financial institutions or the planters of corns, cereals and peanut. And as Gary Hart said, the competitor of Walter Mondale on the candidacy of the Democratic Party for the Presidency of the Republic: “What must be done today is to put the ideology of the Republican and Democratic Parties in the museum”.

Q. Does the Organization element exist in the American Parties?

R. As the American parties are without doctrine, they are also without organization. The Republican and Democratic Parties lack of any internal and external organization. In the internal American party organization, there isn’t any President or Vice president to the Party or even an executive council. They lack also the internal administrative body. There are only electoral committees in each village, city, region and state that take the adequate electoral decisions when the vote day arrives. The American voters are undisciplined members in any of the two parties in the concept of the disciplined member in the European parties especially the ideological ones as the Christian – Democratic German party or Spanish Communist Party, and nothing is organised between them. Discipline is stands on habit and is affected by the environment.

Q. Is the American Parties’ role only for preparing the elections?

R. It is right that the American parties are “election parties” whose role is to prepare the presidential elections every four years and renew for the Congress and Senate every two years.

Q. Does the American political system live without political parties?

R. American parties did not exist on the American political field but during the elections as American society does not need political parties. That what Alexie De Toqueville noticed during his journey to America in 1831 written in his book “Democracy in America” published in 1835. The American society lives without political parties because it overcame the party concept to stick to the values.

Q. What are these Values?

R. They are the values of freedom, liberty and liberties, the values of faith and family especially the values of depending on oneself.

Q. What are your expectations concerning the American elections results?

R. If nothing occurs at the last minute, President Reagan will be reelected again.

Q. What is the internal political background for reelecting Ronald Reagan?

R. American President Reagan didn’t come by chance. He completes the “Founding Fathers” as the American people sees in Ronald Reagan one of the founders of the American Empire of Georges Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson. Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. The Americans wants to reward President Reagan for his success during his term in decreasing the rate of the annual inflation from 11% to less than 5% and in increasing the work opportunities for more than six million Americans, not to mention the dollar in the glitter of the international financial markets.

Q. What is the External political background for reelecting President Ronald Reagan?

R. President Ronald Reagan restituted confidence for the United States of America. The nuclear force balances are not imbalanced any more for the profit of the Soviet Union. He also restored its standing rank: he turned the Pigs Gulf defeat in Cuba in 1961 to a victory in Grinada Island. And the American Commandos who got lost in the deserts of Iran in 1980 turned to a huge armada on the Mideast shores during 1983. The Soviet Union did not make any progress also since 1980, but it suffers in the states it dominated before that year, such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.